looked frightful on the bones
of the forehead and temples. In such case, the outer ear often remained
also, and at its tip, the jewel of the ear as Sidney calls it,
would hang, glimmering, gleaming, or sparkling, pearl or opal or
diamond--under the night of brown or of raven locks, the sunrise
of golden ripples, or the moonshine of pale, interclouded, fluffy
cirri--lichenous all on the ivory-white or damp-yellow naked bone. I
looked down and saw the daintily domed instep; I looked up and saw the
plump shoulders basing the spring of the round full neck--which withered
at half-height to the fluted shaft of a gibbose cranium.

The music became wilder, the dance faster and faster; eyes flared and
flashed, jewels twinkled and glittered, casting colour and fire on the
pallid grins that glode through the hall, weaving a ghastly rhythmic
woof in intricate maze of multitudinous motion, when sudden came a
pause, and every eye turned to the same spot:--in the doorway stood a
woman, perfect in form, in holding, and in hue, regarding the company
as from the pedestal of a goddess, while the dancers stood "like one
forbid," frozen to a new death by the vision of a life that killed.
"Dead things, I live!" said her scornful glance. Then, at once, like
leaves in which an instant wind awakes, they turned each to another, and
broke afresh into melodious consorted motion, a new expression in
their eyes, late solitary, now filled with the interchange of a common
triumph. "Thou also," they seemed to say, "wilt soon become weak as
we! thou wilt soon become like unto us!" I turned mine again to the
woman--and saw upon her side a small dark shadow.

She had seen the change in the dead stare; she looked down; she
understood the talking eyes; she pressed both her lovely hands on the
shadow, gave a smothered cry, and fled. The birds moved rustling in
their nests, and a flash of joy lit up the eyes of the dancers, when
suddenly a warm wind, growing in strength as it swept through the place,
blew out every light. But the low moon yet glimmered on the horizon with
"sick assay" to shine, and a turbid radiance yet gleamed from so many
eyes, that I saw well enough what followed. As if each shape had been
but a snow-image, it began to fall to pieces, ruining in the warm wind.
In papery flakes the flesh peeled from its bones, dropping like soiled
snow from under its garments; these fell fluttering in rags and strips,
and the whole white skeleton, emergin